Poor discharge of slaughterhouses wastes and pollution of water bodies in kumba municipality

Abstract

Background: the slaughtering of animals for human consumption is an important component of every economy. But slaughterhouse activities have a lot of environmental and health risks on the surrounding communities. In Kumba municipality, in most cases, untreated effluents are discharged into the nearby water bodies used by the local communities while the hard parts (horns, hoofs and bones) are discarded off unsustainably around the slaughterhouse premises. Objective : The goal of this study is to assess water quality of water bodies closed to slaughterhouses in Kumba municipality. Methods: The study adopted a purposive sampling technique to administer one hundred and fifty questionnaires to the population, the butchers as well as to conduct interviews with stakeholders. Information for the study was collected using survey, questionnaires, key informant interviews, researcher’s direct observation as well as from hospital reports on the prevalence of slaughterhouse pollution related water borne diseases. Results: the laboratory results of the streams used by slaughterhouses showed variations in water quality parameters as a result of slaughterhouse activities. The findings were later on compared with available hospital records and the results showed that, the poor management of slaughterhouse wastes affected the local population negatively. The population suffered from diseases like, cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. This is because the streams used by the slaughterhouses for the discharge of untreated effluents had severe alterations in temperatures as well as in their nitrate, phosphate, COD, BOD and E.Coli concentrations. Conclusion: slaughterhouses wastes pollute streams enormously which exposes the local population to lots of pollution related diseases. Efforts should be made to reuse some slaughterhouse wastes or to treat slaughterhouse such wastes before discharge into the nearby steams.